x_filesfandomcom-20200223-history
Conduit
Mulder becomes personally connected when he and Scully encounter a young boy who is deeply effected by the disappearance, or abduction, of his teenage sister. Summary Act One At night, in Campsite 53 beside Lake Okobogee, the Morris family sleeps. The mother, Darlene in an RV, whilst 8 year old Kevin and teenage Ruby are outisde in sleeping bags beside a fire. Suddenly, inexplicably the RV begins to rock and a bright light appears outside. Then suddenly all is quiet once again. Kevin begins screaming for his mother, screaming that Ruby has disappeared. Darlene who was shaken out of the top bunk collects herself and reaches for the door knob. But its searing hot, after burning herself she opens the door with an oven glove. She takes hold of Kevin and begins scouting for Ruby. But to no avail. Act Two Section Chief Blevins informs Scully about Agent Mulder's latest 302 which is effectively petitioning the FBI to assign a case number to a tabloid headline: ::"TEEN TAKEN FROM TENT BY ALIENS" With no evidence or further explanation attatched to the 302, Blevins is clearly displeased. After showing Scully case X-40253, an X-File regarding the disappearance of Mulder's sister in similar circumstance, Blevins asks if Mulder's personal quest to discover his sister's fate is clouding his judgement. Scully returns a negative and asks to talk to Mulder and make a recommendation to Blevins on the subject before he dis-allows the 302. In the basement office of the X-Files Scully challenges Mulder on the validity of his request. Mulder replies that the disappearance occured at Lake Okobogee, a known UFO Hotspot. One of four well documented UFO sightings from 1967 involved a young girl scout, now the missing girl's mother, Darlene Morris. This it seems is enough for the 302 to be approved; the two investigators travel to Sioux City, Iowa. Act Three The next day on August 26, Mulder and Scully arrive at the Morris residence and begin questioning Darlene, Mulder tries to talk with Kevin whose been acting strangely since the abduction. Mulder finds him watching static on the TV set and copying a binary string onto a pad of paper. Kevin insists the transmission is coming from the TV even though Mulder observes only static. At the Sioux City Police station Mulder faxes Kevin's transmission fragment to Danny Bernstein at the FBI Cryptography Section. In a simultaneous telephone call Fox promises Danny tickets to a Redskins game as compensation for attempting to decipher the binary string. The Sioux City Sheriff (a former classmate of Darlene Morris) explains that Darlene has been telling stories of her UFO sighting since the first grade; most people in the area dismiss as having an active imagination. This combined with Ruby's well-known wild-child attitude, a lack of evidence at the scene and no ransom note led to the case being dismissed as a simple runaway. Mulder and Scully find a note stuck to their car and covertly meet a friend of Ruby's in a public library who claims that Ruby's boyfriend, Greg Randall, got her pregnant and that the two had been planning to leave town. Act Four Later that night, Mulder and Scully venture to the Pennsylvania Pub in search of Greg Randall who was apparently employed as a barman there. The establishment has a distinct Heavy Metal/Biker feel to it, they quickly discover that Greg has not shown up for work in over three weeks and has been dismissed. Spotting a flying saucer tattoo on the bartender's arm Mulder poses as a UFO skeptic, cleverly encouraging the man to volunteer information to the contrary. This pays off as the man shows the pair his right ear which is badly burnt and disfigured due to what he calls a "killer sunburn at night" at Lake Okobogee. Act Five At 5.30am the next morning Agents from the NSA burst into Scully's hotel room demanding to know where Mulder is. Mulder is then quizzed by Agent Holtzman as to where he obtained the binary string he faxed the previous day which is revealed to be a defense satelite transmission. The Morris residence is ransacked by NSA Agents later that day, Kevin's possessions are boxed up and taken away for investigation, many other items in the house are broken or damaged in casual disregard for the familys rights and freedoms. As the operation draws to a close Mulder and Scully arrive, Mulder collects samples of a substance blistered the roof of the RV present at the lake on the night of the abduction. At the FBI regional office in Sioux City Agent Atsumi explains that 77 pages of binary code recovered from the Morris residence were deciphered, the data included an image of DaVinci's Universal Man, a short animation of a DNA double helix and a short segment of music from the Brandenberg Concerto, some lines from the Koran and a Shakespearan sonnet. Mulder notes that the fragmented nature of the data and its varying origins implies time-division-multiplexing - this is a means of sending multiple messages to multiple destinations/clients at once in a single transmission. Darlene and Kevin Morris are rougly ejected from the NSA building, while Darlene explains that she wants nothing more to do with the FBI, Kevin stares blankly at some CCTV monitors, perhaps seeing embedded transmissions in these too. Act Six Mulder explains to Scully that he belives Kevin has been touched by whatever abducted Ruby, allowing him to percieve these transmissions, the two return to Campsite 53 in the hopes of discovering the truth in the absence of any other evidence. They notice that a line of trees beside the lake have been singed by extreme heat, Mulder then discovers chunks of glass in the sand on the shore also formed by extreme heat (of at least 2500 Celcius). Mulder sights and follows a wolf to a shallow grave just inside the forest containing Greg Randall's body, a note inside has wallet (which still contains money) reads: ::Dr. Jack Fowler Aug.7 - 2:30 Act Seven They match the hand-writing from this note to the one pinned to their car; both are written by the girl they met at the library whose name they discover to be Tessa. The Sherrif had discovered from Dr. Fowler that the appointment was for Tessa and that she had lied to them, infact she was pregnant, not Ruby. Greg Randall was the father and he and Tessa had planned to runaway. Mulder presses her into slipping up and revealing that she killed Greg and would've killed Ruby had she had the opportunity. Scully argues that they should now hand the case over to local law-enforcement and close the X-File, Mulder refuses and presses on to try to find Ruby. They return to the Morris house, which is empty, with the front door unlocked and many sheets of paper laid out on the lounge floor. The papers are covered in neatly written binary strings, Scully looks at the arrangment from the mezzanine level above the lounge and from this new perspective sees the chilling image of Ruby Morris' face made up from 1's and 0's. Act Eight The pair return to Campsite 53 and find the Moriss' RV abandoned by the shore, they follow a trail into the forrest and find Darlene trying to catch her breath, Kevin had escaped her and run deeper into the forrest. Mulder finds Kevin walking towards a bright light which turns out to be the headlights from dozens of bikers off-roading through the forest. Mulder and Kevin run to Scully's screams to find an unconscious Ruby lying on the forrest floor. Act Nine At the Sioux City hospital Scully and Mulder discuss the health of Ruby whose been awake for a few hours. She has several unusual symptoms that can be caused by prolonged weightlessness. Ruby tells the pair that the 'persons' who took her told her not to disclose any details of the abduction. Kevin presses her tell Mulder who he says "already knows", but before Ruby can answer she's interrupted by Darlene who because of the troubles "the truth" has brought her tells the agents to leave and never contact Ruby again. Mulder's desperate pleas to Darlene to let Ruby speak about her experiences are met with stark defiance, he appears crushed that "the truth" has eluded him once again. Back in Washington, Scully reviews Mulder's hypnotic regression tape concerning his sister's disappearance. Mulder describes the room, his paralysis and his sister's cries for help as she was being abducted, at the same time the real Mulder sits in a church crying, looking at his sister's photo. On the tape Mulder describes a voice he can hear in his head, telling him not to be scared and that one day his sister will return unharmed. Asked whether he believes the voice he replies: ::"I WANT to believe." Background Information *The page of binary code Mulder gets from Kevin on his first visit to their home which he then faxes contains only 276 bits, which is 34 and a half bytes. This is an incredibly short chunk of data, shorter than some packet headers infact, it would be almost impossible to gleam even the smallest piece of information from this transmission fragment. Both the fact that many tens of millions of largely similar transmissions are sent every minute and the fact that the pictographs have been re-digitized via the fax machine make it highly unlikely that telecomms monitors would be alerted. *The massive image of abductee Ruby Morris seen in this episode was originally designed by Assistant Art Director Greg Loewen. However, colleague Vivien Nishi had to painstakingly alter the printed binary design to make it seem like an eight-year-old had drawn the image. The assignment took several days to complete, but the final image only appears for a few seconds. *An X-file regarding Samantha Mulder's abduction appears in this episode. It is labelled X-40253 and reveals that Samantha disappeared from 2790 Vine Street, Chilmarc, Massachusetts. 2790 was once the address of The X-Files production office in Vancouver. In "Little Green Men", the first episode of the second season, the name Chilmar'c' is changed to Chilmar'k' in a legend that describes the setting of Samantha's abduction. *In this episode, Scully listens to a recording of Mulder's hypnotic regression where he recalls that he was in bed when his sister was abducted. In a flashback to the incident seen in "Little Green Men", however, Mulder and his sister are seen playing a board game called Stratego before Samantha's abduction. According to executive producer Chris Carter, a possible explanation for this inconsistency may be due to the fact that Mulder's memories are derived from hypnotic regression and are therefore vague. *In this episode, Mulder fires his gun for the first time. He doesn't use it to cause harm, but to simply scare away a pack of wolves. *Actress Shelley Owens appears as Tessa in this episode. Shelley Owens is the sister of Chris Owens, who would eventually portray a young "Cigarette Smoking Man" in the Season 4 episodes, "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man," and, "Demons". He would later star as recurring character, Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, the "Cigarette Smoking Man"'s son, in Seasons 5, 6 and 9. *According to Scully, Tessa had a doctor's appointment scheduled on August 7th. That date is also David Duchovny's birthday. *Joel Palmer who plays Kevin Morris in this episode later guest stars as Michael Holvey in the Season 2 episode, "The Calusari". Links and References Guest Stars *Michael Cavanaugh as Sioux City Sheriff *Charles Cioffi as Section Chief Scott Blevins *Taunya Dee as Ruby Morris *Don Gibb as Pennsylvania Pub Bartender (Kip) *Anthony Harrison as Fourth Man *Mauricio Mercado as Coroner *Akiko Morison as Leza Atsumi *Shelley Owens as Tessa *Joel Palmer as Kevin Morris *Glen Roald as M.E. Worker *Carrie Snodgress as Darlene Morris *Don Thompson as Holtzman References SEMICOLON-SEPARATED LIST OF ITEMS/LOCATIONS REFERENCED IN EPISODE (BUT NOT LINKED TO IF ALREADY LINKED IN SUMMARY OR GUEST STARS SECTIONS) Category:X-Files episodes